Note: Kohatu, painted in 1965, was shown in the Manawatu Prize for Contemporary Art exhibition in Palmerston North, from where it was purchased for the national collection. In te reo Maori, kohatu means stone. Built up from thickly textured layers of ochre paint, the surface of Kohatu is evocative of a cave interior. To this, Muru applied images abstracted from the rock art of the South Island’s Waitaha people, the oldest art forms in New Zealand. Muru used the rock art to evoke timelessness, but rather than directly reproducing the imagery, he developed his own language based on these ancient works. (Megan Tamati-Quennell, 2009)